The Forbidden Doors Box Set

by Cortney Pearson

  Sierra swishes her brown hair and stands with one hand on the top of the car door she hasn’t had a chance to close yet. The haughty, self-assured look she usually wears is gone. Then again, it’s been wiped out since she showed up a few days ago with Piper’s zits. Piper’s zits. Todd still can’t believe what he’s seen. What’s real.

  He meant it when he said he’d hardly noticed the acne on Piper. Her big blue eyes and smile were enough distraction for him. Sierra, with her pseudo flawless perfection, was a different story. It was like splats of mud on a classic painting. Who wouldn’t notice? And believe him, plenty of people had.

  “A lot of nerve you have coming here,” he says.

  Sierra folds her arms and tilts her chin away. “Jordan told me what you said to him.”

  “Yeah, and I meant every word.”

  Her brows fold, and she lets out an indignant scoff. What, did she think he’d apologize for telling him to go to hell, along with the other colorful expletives he’d used, after what she and Jordan did? Piper nearly died.

  “I’m not here to talk to you,” Sierra says, finally slamming her door and trying to shuffle past him. Todd takes her by the arm and steers her back to her door. The last thing he or Piper need right now is Sierra snooping. Todd still has to figure out how to get back in there, and he doesn’t need her getting in the way.

  “Let go,” she orders.

  “You’re not here to talk to her either. Get out of here.”

  “Something doesn’t add up!” she yells as if he’s pushed her too far. She wriggles from his grip and shoves his chest. Then at not moving him in the slightest, she checks herself and glances to the house behind him. “Something with her house. With my skin. I mean, how does an axe cut a person when it didn’t even…” Sierra shakes her head. “And the other stuff…they won’t stop, they just keeping coming…” She drifts off once more.

  “What other stuff?” Todd asks, suspicion riding his voice.

  Her voice is less confident when she goes on. “She wouldn’t tell me at the hospital, but maybe—I mean, is she a witch or something?” She touches her face, her fingers trembling, then lowers them as if in defeat.

  “What do you even care?” Todd says in complete disbelief. “You’ve been a hooch to her since the day she moved to Cedarvale. What makes you think she’ll want to see you, let alone talk to you? And what other stuff were you talking about?”

  She succeeds at shoving past him this time, chin in the air. The stately Victorian looks more looming and mysterious than ever—more out of place among the ordinary bungalows, including Todd’s red brick home, and Jordan Warren’s boxy, custom-built house. She marches straight up the porch and reaches for the bell.

  The lights flicker all at once, a streak of lightning sizzling from within. White, blistering, unnatural light, like someone flicks a switch that connects every wire to turn on in unison.

  “Sierra, wait!”

  Sierra hesitates at the flash, then reaches once more. As she touches the bell the whole house alights again, this time with a palatable charge in the air that scorches the hairs on Todd’s arms.

  In an instant, Sierra gets flung back, vaults right at Todd as if someone has a string tied around her waist and jerked it as hard as they could. Her head knocks his chin. He doesn’t register the sound of shattered glass until sense kicks back in and he sees fragments tinkling at his feet. He licks blood from his lip. A line of pain whips across his shoulder blades where he’d collided with the frame of the car door, and little pricks tell him there’s probably some glass embedded in the skin of his back.

  Sierra is slung against his chest. His arms shake as he tries to hold her limp body from falling to the sidewalk.

  “Sierra? Sierra!”

  Gently, he lowers her to the concrete and brushes hair out of her used-to-be-awesome face. Her eyes are closed. Her chest isn’t moving.

  All Todd can do is curse. In his head, out loud, swear words leak out. I don’t have time for this, he thinks. I’ve got to get back into Piper’s house. He remembers the first time he felt something more for Pipes than friendship, when she’d hugged him on her fourteenth birthday. It was the first time he’d held her and not wanted to let her go. The feeling hadn’t changed much since then. If anything it had gotten stronger, especially after the other night.

  He thinks of the things he and Pipes have gone through the past few days, the newspaper articles, seeing Piper daze out as she’d seen people from the past. He glances at the journal lying in the gutter, recalling with absolute clarity the discovery the two of them had made not an hour ago. No time. No time. No time.

  But despite it all, Sierra’s his friend too. Late-night football practices and movie nights at Jordan’s house, conversations he’s had with the shallow but friendly girl. He’s at a total loss as his shaking fingers make their way to her throat. No pulse.

  He scrambles, glancing around for his phone that he was sure had been in his hand.

  “Screw it,” he says once more, snatching the journal before hefting her limp form in his arms. He runs across the street, not even knocking before he forces his way into Jordan’s house.

  twenty

  four

  Tilting heavily on the wall, I make a slow descent down the spongy, mold-eaten stairs to the basement, fighting every inclination to bolt back up and let Todd in again. Each of my steps leads me farther into the golden haze, but it’s different this time, as if my body changes its consistency to fit in with the surroundings.

  A girl wails, and with a gasp I realize it’s Ada. Two men I don’t recognize, both wearing the same cream shirt and brown vests and pants Thomas usually wears, each hold Ada by an arm. They must be more servants.

  She’s in that yellow dress. Her black hair is ratted. Tears run down her creamy cheeks, and despair mushes her face. Her knees collapse, but the men hold her to her feet.

  I scan in the direction Ada’s looking, and I cleave to the splintery stair rail for support, though it wobbles under my grasp.

  A cuff encloses each of Thomas’ hands, and he dangles from two hooks hanging from the ceiling. Blood streams across his cheek and down his mouth. He looks bedraggled. Broken. The flesh at his wrists is rubbed raw. He’s been stripped down to a single, loose shirt and slacks, and the shirt hangs open to reveal several crimson gashes.

  I don’t want to see this. But the sight—and the pain at my side—has paralyzed me.

  Mr. Garrett dusts his blood-spattered hands on an apron at his waist, smearing red down its front. He turns to Ada, who bellows, pleading with despair.

  “No! Don’t hurt him anymore, please!”

  Mr. Garrett crooks his head. He tilts Ada’s face with a red hand, and a drop spills onto the shoulder of her yellow dress.

  “Now do you realize the damage you’ve done?”

  She whimpers; her face a crumpled disarray of flesh and tears. Her knees tremble, but the men at her arms stiffen their grimaces and hold her fast.

  Garrett lowers his hand, and a slap-mark of blood paints her cheek. Thomas’s blood. He shows her a small, metal gadget. I recognize it from a diagram in Garrett’s journal; the hitch, the one that looked like an old ear-piercing tool.

  “You will be trapped forever in this house with your sins, to contemplate them through the ages. You will watch others inhabit the home you ruined and be able to do nothing to absolve your treachery.”

  Ada’s gleaming orbs pour with desperation to Thomas dangling in the opposite corner. Thomas’ head hangs. A chalky white pentagram is scribbled onto the concrete below him, and lumpy candles sit on each point of the star. Their flames dance.

  Garrett bends his head to the same level as Ada’s. A hunter pestering his prey, antagonizing with simple nearness. “Will you now deny it?” he asks with sadistic softness. “Say it now, so he can hear you.”

  Ada’s eyes clamp
shut, her cheeks a wet, flustered mess. But she stomps and shakes her head.

  “I know you can hear me,” she says, and then her voice grows louder. “Thomas, I know you can hear me. I’ll never deny you.”

  Mr. Garrett straightens. His being overflows with hatred, a glistening dislike so intense it feels like that glance alone will burn straight through her. In one quick movement he stabs the hitch gadget to her throat.

  Ada lets out a cry. Garrett clutches the gadget in front of her face. “When you die, this transfers your soul to wherever I choose. And guess where I choose, Miss Havens?”

  He treads to the long silver table and retrieves a hacksaw from the bloody aftermath. Then he moves over, blocking my view of Thomas. “If I cannot have her, no one will,” he says, holding the saw up so its few shiny parts glint in the dull light.

  “No! Thomas!” Ada crumples with a wail. She pulls at the men holding her, and one braces her arm with two of his. “Thomas!”

  Spine-chilling screams resound—screams filled with pain, along with Ada’s howling cries. I clamp my hands over my ears, but it’s not enough to block out the jarring sounds. My stomach heaves and I break for the door at the top of the stairs, though I know I have no real escape. Vomit escapes my mouth, giving my cries a sour taste, splattering on the top step and hitting my black shoes.

  Questions bash me from all sides. I don’t know how Garrett could do this. How jealousy could drive a man this far. And my dad—I want to know what he knew before he died.

  Time lives on a line, rolling from one instance to another. But is it possible for everything to happen all at once, and we only participate in what we can see?

  This is what I’ve heard in the early hours of the morning. The thought hits me with a wave of convulsions, and I struggle to stay on my feet. The banister groans under my weight, but I can no longer support myself. Not when more screams hit the air.

  The glow fades, leaving me with a damp cold eating at my skin. The sun sets outside, casting shadows over the furniture and threatening to drop me in darkness.

  I’m a sweaty, vomit-y mess, and the bruises and my stitches throb. I squat on all fours and gawk at the black opening. The light dissipates completely at the top of the basement stairs. The screams also fade, but they won’t leave my mind. They echo in the lingering silence.

  My arms barely hold me up, they wobble so badly. I sink on my heels and wipe a quivering hand across my mouth. I have to find her.

  Unsteady, I push to my feet. But my knees give out. Pain impales my side, pulling a cry from my tangy lips. And I break. I fall to the floor like a puppet whose strings have just been snipped. My fingers curl against the hardwood, and my lower lip collapses as tears gush past it. Poor Thomas. Poor Ada.

  I want someone. Anyone. But Garrett has Joel, and Todd will just try to make me come to his house. There’s no way I can leave now. I have to stop this. To figure it out.

  I don’t know where the strength comes from, but I ignore the lancing pain in my side and push to my feet, cleaving to the counter for support. My limbs vibrate with a weakness I can’t shake. A hand at my side, I grimace and force my feet to the open blackness beyond the basement door.

  “Ada,” I call down. But my voice is weak, scarcely a squeak.

  For some reason, even though the glow has lifted, I can still see the hooks dangling from the ceiling down there, hooks rusted over with dried blood. The metal operating tables, the hacksaws and dull blades. My dad knew what was happening down here, and my mom had to know. They should never have let it happen.

  Trembling, I stand at the top and force my voice.

  “He was the Spare-Tooth Bandit, wasn’t he?”

  The feeling of a presence is my answer. I grit my jaw. I hear her voice before I see her. And to my intense relief, it comes from behind me, not in the basement.

  “Yes.”

  Ada looks out to the window and the now dirt street trapped in time. Her form is just an outline, like a smoky, blue drawing someone didn’t take the time to fill in. The brick houses I’m used to have vanished—I wonder if that means I’m in the past now. A pair of women in long classy dresses and wearing bonnets passes, and Ada speaks.

  “He took me off the streets when my mother died. Gave me a decent vocation. In return, I cannot betray him.”

  “What he asked you to do was wrong,” I say, still shaking from head to toe. I can’t believe she’s defending him. “And I don’t even know exactly what it is.”

  “Mr. Garrett is a brilliant man,” Ada says. “But he is something like Faustus who sold his soul for black magic and Dr. Frankenstein who used human parts to fabricate a monster.”

  “Okay,” I say, trying to wrap my brain around her references. I sink into the chaise—the same place I sat the first time I saw her in that stunning dress. My stomach throbs. “Frankenstein I’ve heard of.” But at least the dudes were dead before he stole their parts!

  “Dr. Faustus gained all the knowledge he could through mortal means, but it was not enough. He dealt his soul to the devil, promising eternal servitude for a few short years of black magic. Garrett has no soul, I am certain of it. No one with a soul can do what he does and manage to live with himself. And all in the name of science.”

  “What exactly is he doing, Ada?” I ask again. Her rambling doesn’t tell me much. I’m trying to connect pieces and conclusions I drew from the journal and newspaper clippings, but my brain is too tormented with pictures of Thomas’ last moments. I attempt to move my foot, but even that small motion zaps pain right into my stitches.

  She turns away. “It is a fearful sight.”

  “Yeah, I was just down there, remember?” Silence stretches between us. My gut hasn’t settled, and blood whizzes through like it’s trying to steer clear of my brain and the images implanted there. “Please tell me.”

  “He captures men. And women. He steals their limbs in a dreadful fashion; mutilates their faculties. But he is not decent enough to simply end their misery—he leaves them in grotesque disfigurement and relies on Thomas to distribute the bodies and me to clean up the disarray.”

  “And the Frankenstein part? Is he—trying to build a human or something?”

  “No,” Ada says, rubbing her ghostly arms. Fading, orange light from the window plays through her translucent body. “He claims it is science, but it is filthy magic, if you were to ask me. He dabbles in time. It is how I live on though I know I am dead. It is how this house lives on, perfectly restored as the day it was completed.”

  Garrett’s journal. The pictures, diagrams and drawings—it all makes sense.

  “You mean—?”

  “Garrett uses magic, along with the human fragments to create an elixir. And he must repeat the process every year to maintain the illusion.”

  “What process?”

  “Thirteen pieces. From thirteen specimens. And always the thirteenth must be from your modern world, to complete the connection to the past.”

  I stand, but my knees buckle. My mother knew. And that means—

  “My father helped Garrett, didn’t he? That’s the responsibility he felt he had to this house.” The responsibility Joel mentioned. The conversation I overheard.

  I think of people who disappeared or were killed around Cedarvale through the years. Oh gosh, my dad could have been the cause. I shake my head. If it had been my mom Dad wouldn’t have insisted we move the house. We would have just left after she was gone.

  I rope my hair around my shoulder and grip as hard as I can. If my mother is innocent after all, there’s no way I can possibly prove it.

  But hold up. If Dad was killing people, how is it that he never got caught? My gaze flickers to the window, to the yard outside. The gazebo. The statues, the fountain. Dad outside, digging in the patch of dirt out back. Joel doing the same, complaining how he didn’t want this. How Dad had told him to prep t
he dirt. In the patch out back.

  I hear Mom’s voice, drunkenly singing the words to what I thought had been an innocent nursery rhyme. Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?

  “Oh my gosh.”

  It was no garden.

  It was a cemetery.

  I get the sudden urge to empty my stomach again.

  “What was in it for him?” I ask, feeling absent, like my body is somewhere else while my mind is forced to stay. My mind keeps conjuring up images of Dad sneaking body parts out of the house in the middle of the night.

  “Immortality,” Ada says with understanding in her eyes. Like she feels sorry for me.

  “But he’s dead.”

  “Are you certain?”

  I blink. This is almost too much. Dad died. We had a funeral. We buried him. “Whoa, wait. Are you saying my father is still alive? How? I saw them take him away. I—I saw his body go into the ground.” In a real cemetery.

  Even as I speak, though, I’m struck with odd acceptance. Why else would his voice tap across the channels, breach through the TV to give me some message, if he wasn’t still attached to this house in some way? The noises, the voices, they can’t all be from Ada. I think again of the pictures of grandparents, great-grandparents, and the great-greats dispersed throughout the house.

  “Where are they?” I ask.

  “There’s a reason the door has no handle,” Ada says.

  “The door? The floating door?” It can’t be, yet somehow I know it is. “My dad agreed to that? To be a part of this house like you are?”

  “Our souls are lost after death, Miss Crenshaw,” Ada explains. “Your father, and his before him, ensured he would be in good company. With family.”

  Oh barf. What an inheritance I have. I think of Shane Turcott’s question when he cornered me after finding out the truth about my mom. Does murder run in the family?

  Apparently it does. Lucky me. I wonder if this means Joel was being groomed for this as well. If he’s murdered anyone for Garrett yet. And was my mother in on it?